All posts by mlctaskforce

Well…Imagine my surprise when I logged in and this site still works. Luckily for us and for you!! We have some changes coming. Some new blood coming to get us old guys back on track. New features, new postings, new concept and yes, a new name. More to come…

Ever have a day that felt like a song? Maybe it is just the music, maybe the lyrics, maybe both. Today is “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young for me. Maybe it is the melancholy mood I am in. The change of seasons always make me feel a little sentimental for past times. This song always puts me in this sleepy, reflective and thoughtful mood. It is not a bad feeling, it just does make me miss some of the days that have gone by. I won’t make this a long post, just thought I would share. If you ever have a day like this, feel free to share. I would love to know about it.

It seems like that is the case as of late. Angry at things I cannot control. Angry at the state of the world. Angry at the state of my life. Angry that time passes way too quickly with no regards to anyone. Seething anger that sometimes has no reason or rhyme. Maybe it is part of getting older. Less patience, less tolerance. I don’t know. I do know that the older I become the more I see the uselessness of most things. The day-to-day minutia at work. It feels so pointless anymore. When I was younger I did my job, tried hard and tried to work my way up. Two lay-offs later and too many articles read about how corporations have people by the short and curlies, I have come to the conclusion that it all just doesn’t matter. All of this bullshit we go through, just to get by, it is frustrating. It all feels to meaningless. Shuffle paper, make duplicates, work overtime to impress a boss, it is a waste. This is what life has become and it has become that way because we desire things. I am as guilty of that as anyone. 2000 CDs later and 3 video game consoles can prove that. Life shouldn’t be about working until you are too old to enjoy what time we have on this planet. Life should be about learning and exploring the world around us. We should be able to do without these distractions that we have become so dependent on. All we need are the basic necessities to get by, but our economy is so fucking dependent on us consuming things, that it has been forced down our throats that we NEED to have things. We NEED to keep up with everyone else. We have become slaves to gadgets and gizmos that provide only a veneer of necessity. We are sheep when it comes to the latest iPhone or iWhatever. We are led by the Shepard of Consumption. We blindly follow as we sip our lattes and wander through the fields of merchandise and hope that we are not left behind. We are a consumer based economy that has tied itself to the idea that we must work harder, make more money, buy more stuff and repeat. We are now defined by our career and what we own, instead of who we are. That makes me the angriest of all.

On a different tangent, but something that also makes me angry, is this age of political correctness and lack of common sense that plagues this world. People have lost the ability to use their judgment to make decisions. Although I will admit there is a reasoning behind this. Our society has become so litigious that we have to debate on whether to save someone’s life if they are drowning, just because they might sue us if they get hurt in the process. We have become a society of “lawyers, guns and money” to quote the late-great Warren Zevon. It is not a good thing. We can’t laugh at ourselves or anyone else because they might get their feelings hurt. Get over it. Your culture and my culture and everyone else’s culture has done some pretty stupid things. Learn to admit it and laugh at it. One particular thing I want to vent about is the school system in this country. Specifically, their “Zero Tolerance” policies. Kids that are being bullied are being suspended from school for standing up for themselves. Hell I read an article where one kid was suspended just for being bullied. School are so scared of ignorant parents that are sue-crazy that these Zero Tolerance policies are running rampant. They rather not deal with a subject like bullying and just sweep it under the rug by blaming everyone involved and not the little bastards that are doing the actual bullying. I was always told, I better not ever start a fight, but if I am picked on, I damned well better finish it. That is how you deal with a bully, you stand up to one. School districts AND parents need to get together and come up with a better plan that zero tolerance. Common sense needs to be the ruling hand in these cases and not fear of a lawsuit. Also, parents need to get off their asses and do some actual parenting. Teach your kids that you do not need to pick on someone to make yourself feel good. Teach them right and wrong. Don’t depend on some TV show to show them morals, do it yourself. Also, punish them if they break these rules. Everyone needs to learn wrong from right in this situation.

I feel if we do not change as a society, we will become working slaves to our corporate masters. We will be so caught up in working and buying that we do not do any actual living. We are becoming colder as a nation. We are being fooled by a corporate sideshow that promises happiness disguised as a home we cannot afford or as a car we don’t need. Given the state of the economy and the dim view that the future holds, I don’t see any of it changing. We owe it to the next generation to try and start changing the attitude about what life consists of. It shouldn’t be a day to day rat race that never ends, but it should be something that is fun and that brings us together as a people. We do not need to be shackled by our work just to try and makes ends meet. We need to stand up for the things we believe in and make things better for future generations. Maybe this is just crazy hippy talk left over from a by gone age. I just believe we were not put on the world to work 40-60 hours a week just to be able to buy a new car and take a crappy vacation now and then and to make some shareholders richer. We have a purpose, we just need to be able to live within our means and be able to work towards that purpose. We need to use the common sense we have and try and work towards that change.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me these days we communicate rather than talk. Go to a restaurant, look around and you will see teenagers, parents, girlfriends, hell even people on dates sitting there and staring into the glowing comfort of their phones. They have the stare of someone who looks like they are talking about something important, but actually are talking about… well let me be honest, I have no fucking clue what they are talking about. What is so goddamned important that you have to text about it while you are out with people? I mean there is a living breathing person in front of you. Talk to them! It is maddening to see such lack of contact among people. With each click of our phone screens, we become further away from caring and curious individuals and closer to blind animals running around with no clue of the world around them. We transform into these shells who rely on their phones to be connected to the outside world, when the world is right there staring them in the face. We use emoticons instead of emotions, hash tags instead of full sentences. But Lefty, it is convenient. Sometimes I don’t want to talk to someone, so I text them. What kind of goddamned sense does that make? Either you want to talk to someone or you don’t. This half-assed excuse for not physically speaking to someone drives me insane. Don’t even get me started on the idiots who text and drive. Those people are giant douche-bags waiting to wrap themselves around a phone pole or worse, take out someone with them.

Maybe I come off sounding like someone out of touch with the modern world. I guess I am in a sense. I remember in my younger days, people sitting and talking to each other face to face. A real connection being made between people. This digital age, with all of its glory and amazing ideas, does have its drawbacks and casualties. One of these is the death of the English language. Writing now has become how clever we can get in 140 characters. If you try and decode these messages with all of their alternative characters for letters and words, they still make no sense. Why are we like this? It is because of the technology that has led up to this point. We are a society of wanting it now and getting it now. Computers have made this possible. It has also made us as a society take short cuts with almost everything. Twitter is a prime example of that. Instantaneous information can be had with a click of a link. It can be a wonderful tool to use to get live, in the moment information. Unfortunately it is also used to slowly strangle the way we talk and express ourselves. For all of the talk about twitter and social media bringing us together, I feel it has made us more isolated.